


soap

by kashxy



Series: will i ever stop writing angst? (no) [16]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming
Genre: CSA, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Dissociation, Non Graphic, PTSD, Self Harm, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25571527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashxy/pseuds/kashxy
Summary: he’s tried so hard to get clean. he’s flushed himself with drugs and scrubbed his skin till he bled all over.he’ll swallow soap until he throws it all up and maybe then his insides will be as clean as he so desperately aches to be.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Skip Westcott/Peter Parker (past)
Series: will i ever stop writing angst? (no) [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1361449
Comments: 2
Kudos: 201





	soap

the water is hot around peter’s body, but he doesn’t notice. he focuses on the tiles in front of him, numb as ever, and pours the bubble mixture into the bath.

he doesn’t really know how much he’s used before it’s too late and the bubbles are everywhere, in his eyes, in his ears, in his mouth until all he can taste is soap but he can’t bring himself to move. it’s better this way.

and really, it is. he’s tried so hard to get clean, he’s flushed himself with drugs and scrubbed his skin till he bled all over. he’ll swallow soap until he throws it all up and maybe then his insides will be as clean as he wants.

somewhere far away, but really only in the room below, peter can hear tony moving around, making a dinner for the two of them. it’s their friday together, the one day they have to not worry about projects and just enjoy each other’s company. he tries to ignore the stabbing pain in his throat, because he really could only get clean here - they didn’t have a bath at his old, rundown apartment.

he swallows, soap burning his throat, and tries to pull his eyes from the tiled wall. his head’s going woozy, the heat blocking his nose until the only way he can breathe is through the bubbles in his mouth.

the memories are always rife around this time, but this year in particular seems heartbreakingly agonising.

he doesn’t know why. nothing in particular had happened. he’d been spider-man for a few years, he hadn’t had a significant birthday, and nothing had changed. nothing’s happened that he can pin his finger on, and it makes the anxiety worse and worse until he can’t even exist properly.

he takes a deep, shuddering breath and tries to clear his mind. it never works, but it helps his lungs inflate a little better.

his body tingles with phantom pains, the feeling of skip’s hands still so present even after six years. it’s still as fresh as ever, the smell, the sight, the taste, his senses so overrun with agony that he can’t breathe.

he thinks back to breathing through skip’s hand, pressed so hard against his mouth that he hadn’t been able to move his lips to scream for help. he thinks of his fingers pinching his nose, holding and holding and holding until peter’s vision swam and he’d thrown his mouth open in desperation. he doesn’t like to think about what happened after that.

he opens his mouth almost on instinct, breathing through the tears, and lets his eyes unfocus from the wall. the pain comes rushing back, like he’s reliving it all over again at a million times a minute, exaggerated until it feels like little pin pricks all over his skin.

he thinks of the way skip had said his name, how it had sounded so harsh and biting and loving all at the same time so he could never tell the difference between kindness and malice. he thinks of shaking every time he passed skip on the stairs after he’d taken the elevator once and it had broken down with only him and skip in it. _parker luck,_ he’d thought with a sour bitterness as skip forced him to his knees.

“peter? dinner’s here!”

and he breaks. 

it’s the way tony says his name so desperately, the way he can hear the breaking in his voice even from here. he’s been chipping away at his own self esteem for weeks on end now, unable to handle the pure agony of growing trauma. he knows he’s been hurting everyone around him, but the pain he’s in is worse than anything.

he starts crying, loud, ugly sobs, so loud that they ricochet off the tiles and echo in the quiet bathroom. there’s a scream bubbling at the back of his throat, rising until he can’t breathe and then he’s screaming and screaming and screaming and friday’s shouting and tony’s shouting and everything’s so fucking loud and he can’t breathe here, he can’t breathe anywhere.

he can still feel skip’s hands on him, can feel him dragging his hair back until he’s choking and suffocating underneath the bubbly water. cheeks flushed, peter starts to scratch at the healing cuts on his forearm, the blood bubbling at the surface and staining the bubbles around him. he can hear tony banging on the locked door to his bathroom, but he can’t bring himself to do anything but cry.

“peter, open the door!” tony’s shouting, and his voice is so loud and shaking with anxiety and peter’s own is broken and hoarse and he can’t stop _screaming_ , god, it never _stops_. 

there’s words in the screams, like _let me go_ and no no no _no no **no NO**_ repeated over and over and over again until they sound foreign and he’s heaving over blood stained bubbles and his wrists are covered in blood and the door’s flying open and tony’s standing there gasping for breath with his mouth open ready to scold.

“peter, what the hell is...” he trails off because peter can’t him over his cries, because the closest thing he has to a son is bleeding from the wrists and he’s screaming and staring and it’s so terrifying that tony can’t do anything but look for a minute.

“sir.” friday starts, breaking tony from his stare. “peter would benefit from medical attention right now.”

right. medical attention.

tony snaps himself out of it, able to think a little clearer now that peter’s stopped screaming and is just crying brokenly over the bath. he hasn’t even acknowledged tony’s presence, hasn’t looked at him or jumped or said hi or smiled all tooth and dimples at him like he used to. tony had known something was going on, but he hadn’t known it was this bad, that it would result in _this_. 

he grabs a towel from the cabinet on the other side of the en suite, a white one nonetheless, but whatever, he’ll throw it. he walks over to peter, holding it like it’s a baby, and bends down slowly.

“hey, pete.” he soothes, gently wrapping the towel around his forearm. “i’m just gonna stop the bleeding, okay?”

peter doesn’t answer but his cries are quieter, his voice still broken from the screaming but calming slowly, so slowly. tony takes that as a win, and reaches over to the other towels he’d grabbed. there’s about five, but he doesn’t care, because it looks like there’s nothing peter needs more than to be smothered in warmth and comfort.

“come on.” he mumbles, splashing a hand in the water. it’s hot to the touch, and peter’s skin is red and blotchy. “let’s get out the bath, yeah?”

peter doesn’t move, just heaves through his mouth and keeps staring at that spot in the wall. the cries turn to sniffles, and he lets tony wrap a towel around his shoulders.

“drop this when you get out.” he says, letting peter wrap the sopping wet towel around himself. “i’ve got fresh.”

he holds out another one, large and fluffy and white and turns his head the opposite direction. he gestures blindly to the little handle on the opposite wall, so peter has a hand in getting up.

he gets up shakily, his too skinny legs all red and sensitive. he steps out, nudging the towel around his torso and wraps it so it’s tight, too tight to be comfortable but tight enough that it helps ground him. it feels like a hug, even more so when tony reaches around him and puts two warm towels around his shoulders.

“come on.” he murmurs, an arm securely around peter’s shoulders. “you’re alright.”

the bubbles stick to his hair as tony gently leads him into the bedroom, his body still shaking with near silent cries. his stomach hurts from too much soap swallowed, and his throat burns with years of screaming all tumbling out at once.

tony stops him at the foot of the bed, grabbing a pair of sweatpants from the pillow, his eyes never leaving peter for more than a second as he does. they’re a large pair that peter had stolen from his father figure a few months back, because tony had never had the heart to ask for them back. he enjoyed watching peter lounge around the tower in them, took pride in the small comfort that they were the first thing he reached for when he was upset.

so he hands him the sweatpants and lets peter dry himself for a couple minutes while he faces the wall, his mind going a thousand miles a second but his exterior completely calm in the face of panic. he takes the time to scan for any signs that something went wrong, for anything that might have triggered such a breakdown. he comes up short, with nothing but the sixty eight peter got on a science quiz a couple weeks before.

tony sets himself gingerly on the bed, motioning peter over softly. he watches the teens eyes widen slightly and cocks his head.

“you wanna sit down and we can talk?”

“not here.” peter says, too quiet, like he’s not speaking in the present but somewhere far in the past. tony watches him for another minute, peter’s large brown eyes glued to the bed, slowly filling with tears as his body starts to tremble again.

“okay, okay.” he says, rushing back to peter’s side. he holds him, letting the teenager tuck himself under his left arm, and gently starts to make his way towards the living room below them. “it’s alright. i got your favourite chinese food right downstairs.”

the light hearted tone falls flat, as tony half expected it would do. as they walk, silent apart from the hitching breaths and hiccups in peter’s tired voice, he looks at the small, makeshift tourniquet of a towel on the smaller boy’s forearm. he stares at it for too long, blood slowly starting to stain a little on the fabric near his thumb.

tony winces and turns back to the stairs, directing his attention on making sure the boy under his arm needn’t think about anything other than the fact that he’s safe right now.

“you’re safe.” he murmurs, because it seems like the right thing to do. “you’re safe here.”

it must be, because peter whimpers and curls in closer, his bare feet padding against the marble stairs as they descend into the living room. the smell of warm chinese food is comforting in the air, but he’s lost his appetite.

“here, here, you sit, i’ll, um...do you want hot cocoa?”

peter hiccups and shakes his head, letting tony gently guide him down to the sofa, still neat and prepared with cushions and blankets and snacks because they were supposed to be having a movie night tonight. his hands fall from peter’s body as he sits and curls in on himself, so he’s left standing with nothing.

he knows he shouldn’t ask, but he can’t help it. he just found his kid screaming in the bath surrounded by boiling hot water and bubbles and blood. he feels sick as he sits next to peter’s trembling body, the words spilling out before he can stop.

“peter, what happened?”

he’s still coughing, because the soap’s burned his throat as it worked its way through his body. the towel feels warm and comforting around him, and there’s nothing more he wants to do than leap forward into tony’s arms and eat chinese food and then fall asleep right here. but tony’s still staring at him and he’s started crying again and his stomach hurts and nothing’s gonna be the same ever.

“i swallowed some soap.” he says.

“what? is that - that can’t be good, right? friday? call-”

“i’m fine.” peter says, focusing his eyes on tony. they ache, like they’re so swollen from crying he can barely see. he tries to force a smile, but it falls flat on his lips.

“peter, please...” tony says, his voice dripping in concern. he looks wide awake, but there’s nothing peter wants more than to sleep. “please tell me what’s going on.”

he wishes it were easy. he wishes he could choke down the tears and tell tony why he’s so afraid of men with blonde hair and green eyes that’re taller and older than him and he wishes he could tell him why he sometimes wakes up screaming and why he dissociated for two whole hours after a simple robber pushed him to the floor and crouched over him and he wishes he could tell him everything but he can’t.

he can’t.

he’s tried so hard before. but the words never come, because his throat can’t cope with saying _i’m not innocent, my whole life is living under a lie, why should i protect people when i can’t even protect myself?_ why is it so easy to speak until it comes to something so hard and then it feels like his body’s turning itself inside out just to cease the words?

he takes a deep, shaky breath and just says nothing.

he can see the moment tony’s heart breaks. his whole face falls, his eyes turning downward as he breathes in. it looks like he’s searching for the words, but they won’t come to him.

“peter, i-” he starts, looking like he’s going to cry himself. “you can tell me. anything at all. you can tell me.”

peter looks at him for a long time, his body warm under the fluffy towels, his hair starting to curl around drying bubbles. his throat aches, but his body feels empty, like it’s finally cleaning, like he’s finally safe and it’s finally all coming to a wrap.

and then tony puts a hand on his knee and it shatters around him and he flinches away so violently that his spider dna helps him flip all the way to the other side of the couch. tony looks shocked, as he should, but peter can’t do anything but stare and shake.

“i’m sorry.” he says, lip trembling. “i’m sorry.”

tony shakes his head, already halfway through getting to his feet when peter walks back. his body is exhausted, his limbs moving on their own, shattered accord as he falls into tony’s arms and starts crying against his chest.

“i’m sorry, i’m sorry.” he sobs, every inch of his body tingling with emptiness. “i’m so sorry. i’m so, so sorry.”

“hey,” tony says, soothing against his hair. his lips are soft against the top of his head, the kisses gentle and fatherly. “it’s alright. it’s alright, i promise you. you’re just fine, pete.”

peter nods, his tears wetting through the shirt tony’s wearing. it’s some stupid science pun shirt he brought him a couple years ago, and he wore it every friday without fail. pepper had secretly told him he loved it so much he wore it to bed.

that makes him smile a little. he sniffles against tony’s chest, pulling back to wipe his face on the towel around his shoulders. tony looks fond as he stares down, a little scared but fond nonetheless. 

“i’m sorry for scaring you.” peter mumbles, letting tony gently guide them back to the sofa. he’s careful not to touch him again, but peter’s body aches with starvation.

“i know you might not want to talk about it.” tony starts, handing peter a pot of noodles. “but it might help.”

and the food is so warm, so comforting, that he wraps his hands around it and looks at tony’s gentle face and his whole heart hurts that the tears squeeze out gentler than before. tony doesn’t move to comfort him, but his fingers twitch. so peter does the only thing he can think of to give him, and smiles.

and the words come. 


End file.
